Birdsong

by Sebastian Faulks

One day she might lie to him and he would never know. Perhaps all women had this ability to survive.

When even the divine sacrifice had been expressed in such terms, it was sometimes hard to imagine in what manner precisely human life was supposed to exceed the limitations of pulse, skin and decomposition.

‘You’re mad,’ said Weir. ‘Don’t you just want it to be over?’ ‘Yes, of course I do. But now that we have come this far I want to know what it means.’

‘I don’t know your life history, but I think children need to believe in powers outside themselves. That’s why they read books about witches and wizards and God knows what. There is a human need for that which childhood normally exhausts. But if a child’s world is broken up by too much reality, that need goes underground.’

Some crime against nature is about to be committed. I feel it in my veins. These men and boys are grocers and clerks, gardeners and fathers – fathers of small children. A country cannot bear to lose them.

When he looked into his reserves of strength he found that he could bear this thought. He told himself that the feeling they had had for each other still existed, but that it existed at a different time.

Where there is real love between people, as there was between all of us, then the details don’t matter.